I'm working class in a "red state", in a college town. It is a very odd mix, and a fairly even split. One phenomenon I've noticed is that people have become far more political, yet nobody seems willing to look into the actual policies they are championing. They just yell more.

Not sure how you can mention Venezuela without addressing the crushing economic warfare being waged against it. Or its oil reserves. I'm sure there's no connection though....

Venezuela "it's so crap" and no mention of crushing US sanctions. massive blind spot

Very interesting discussion on infrastructure. I've been wondering how China can build such amazing high speed trains and California can't build one from LA to Sacramento without spending absurd amounts of money. Sometimes a more centralized state has benefits. I think this applies to Covid response as well.

You both didn't mention the trade treaty in Asia being signed. Any implications for US and EU regarding that treaty? Will it have implications for the negotiations between EU and Australia/New Zealand on trade?

Much as I admire your analytical skills, Mark, I'm not sure of the epistemological significance of your insistence on whether we (?) are "surprised" when shit happens that some thought would and some thought wouldn't actually occur, but nobody knew how to, or could, DO anything about.

always a worthwhile discuss ! thank you !

Not 'educated' but really a 4 year degree; all the things you go through to do that. My brother, a retired dairy farmer wouldn't trade-in his chemistry B.S. I wouldn't like to think of me without the forging process of a college education. I don't look down on those w/o college. But it makes a huge difference in a person's life.

I have not been to school since I was 13. I was the Senior Network and Network Applications Architect for a major Telco in Europe plus other great postions that many would have killed for. My boss began his career, climbing telegraph poles for the GPO at the age of 16. Together we have fired so many people with degrees and even 5 who had a Phd. because they were utterly useless! They always had a raft of issues that needed to be discusssed in endless meetings with no resolution. They always had a comprehensive list of reasons why a thing could not be done or would not work. I always found that people with 'lower' qualifications to be much more productive and creative in their designs and their approach to troubleshooting.

Great story regarding the connection with Sean Connery, cheers!

You two put the boom boom into my heart (intro music reference)

I want to hear about the signing of RCEP, please.

M&C podcast? In the words of Barney Gumble, 'just hook it to my veins!'

Great discussion! and you made it fun! I loved the information about Sean Connery and the grant from Scotland. From a Lanarker. (you know where they started the factory system and I have to wonder if that is why my ancestor left there...)

25:55 - Mark Blyth is now a Scotish National Trust Patron _________ And An American Treasure

Sean and Boris, Mark has real talent

I don't think the general argument about education correlating with party affiliation is necessarily "ha, you stupid", but rather: people who attended higher education are more likely to properly research topics, not to mention that they will generally have more free time and less pressure to even go there, so they're less prone to fall for baseless propaganda. During political discussions, arguments for the Trump side of things rarely ever hit reasonable criticism of Liberalism or differing world views - they seem to always revolve around completely made-up things, supposed things Trump did (not really though), praising the US Covid response when the numbers damn it, up to all the Q stuff. Of course there are Democrats who fall for hoaxes, the anti-vaxx movement is mostly on that side, but the difference in misinformation is definitely an order of magnitude. A critical approach to gathering information is a skill and it one that is specifically taught and required at unis but not as much in trade schools. I do agree that many people on the left use this in a condescending fashion, but that doesn't take away from the overall point. The real left approach to it would not make any value judgement about any human beings with regards to their education, job, wealth, etc.

As far as Latino voters exit data shows that it was class related and those earning more than 100k annually went for Trump and those under went for Biden.

31:40 capacity = willingness + ability. since my american government plans to continue purging the poor, capacity is intentionally limited. just like aid for natural disasters, some sort of ubi during a government enforced lockdown, general healthcare, education, good paying jobs.....all intentionally limited, while blaming the powerless.

Why can't the federal government use an expanded food stamp program to distribute food? At least the federal government should fund food banks.

I listened to the podcast, but, I can't "like" it on my pod service, so I came here to put a "like" on it.. .. oh, and which direction will he juke to when he pulls the crazy Ivan.. I forget.? Y'all prove to me I'm still sane.. there's value in that. thanks!

"Trump is the base," is poignant. I said in 2016 that the GOP base loves him because he is saying out loud to a TV camera what they anonymously type on right wing website comment sections. Trump is simply regurgitating what they want to hear, that is why they love him so much.

my first computer was a vic 20... but I owned a 486dx33 and did CAD with it.

"Boris is a posh Grinch". Wouldn't that make him Scrooge? Even the unwillingness to feed starving kids is covered

Thumbs up on clicking purely for the title reference 👍

Sorry Mark, as of yesterday 1 in 5 corona test in Sweden is positive, testing capacity is nearing maximum and death no. are going up again 😣 + it has the higest no. of deaths among young people in Scandinavia incl. 2 children.

Damnit, still no video. It's easier to stay focused on listening to them when I can see them.

Mark, you're alluding to Marx one minute and then just completely forgetting the whole incredibly useful systemic analysis he provides the next. Base/superstructure. "Education" is indeed the dividing line as far as I can tell, but importantly in the US _not_ through the "skills" proxy or "educated/not educated" delineation as you suggest, but instead filtered through these dumb cultural signifiers that one is taught in college or is presented with through the media by people who have or have not had this "education" of "good" and "bad" symbolic affect. It's superstructure all the way down because class is not seen at all in this country (gee, I wonder why *_*cough_** powell memo-esque massive corporate propaganda everywhere you look *_*cough_**). Yes, there are two different ontologies that have fissured out of the ashes of the once largely unified working class, but importantly _neither_ of them are based in material reality, because to do so would be to open the flood gates of any sort of class consciousness, and we can't have that of course (because that's also how you "change these peoples' minds" - through the lived experience of _improving material conditions_ instead of more cultural spectacle nonsense). Dialectical materialism. It's all essentially just a game of sportsball with people cheering for Team A, the party of "don't be an asshole" superego, or Team B, the party of "don't tell me what to do" ego, with a foundational id of capitalism enforcing the inevitable stripping of the copper wire of society through the austerity you have written so well about, all right in front of all of our eyes while the world itself becomes an actual hellscape. DeBord's Society of the Spectacle or Baudrillard's conception of 'hyperreality' are great elaborations of the point I'm shittily trying to elaborate here. Also, as others have said...US sanctions on Venezuela are devastating, same in Iran, and the already devastatingly war-torn country (thanks to...oh yeah, that was us too - check out OPCW whistleblowers on wikileaks regarding that by the way...) of Syria. We're in for quite a shitshow if Biden isn't that sleeper socialist Trump pretended he was, because the devastation will merely compound without any actual improvement to material conditions (like...no talk of healthcare thus far...during a pandemic...insane) and if "the next Trump" isn't just Trump, it'll be some charismatic "outsider" likely in fundamentalist christian garb to swoop in through the cultural miasma, garner a similar cult of personality, and likely bring with them intentions to bring about some sort of divinely mandated personally imagined apocalypse. The courts are packed with these theocratic "prosperity gospel" nutjobs, a few on the supreme court now, the path seems pretty well paved and it just needs someone to walk down it.

Ahhhhh... Listening to intelligence at 6:30 am so refreshing :)

one of a few movies better than the book The hunt for...

Following rules, YES! Remember the Melbourne problem? Well everyone, EVERYONE, wears a mask, followed the restrictions and after 3.5 months we went from 700 cases to 16 consecutive days of 0. Everything is steadily opening and life can move on.

28:00 you didnt mention yer band 😜

I dunno if it is insulting for half of pop but for the fact that on the right the "pogomstimmung" is at the start of all the "debatable" issues.

I live in Asia and Asia's secret for cv19 is that they don't rely on big pharma 100% of the time, they use alternative methods, Traditional medicine vitamins ozone therapy

Taiwan, was the best 7 deaths from COVID by March. Still 7 deaths today.

Belgium has a much higher population density than the US and they manage to get their curves really down in contrast to the US

Connery wiznae fae Leith ya Dundonian bam, he wiz fae Foutainbridge oan the other side o toon))

19:00 i want to vote on policy not people

Y E S ! One Ping Only ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !

0:43 wait there's a coup in greece ?

Always enjoy your weekly commentary. Not too sure if I agree with Mark’s takes on “elite democrat reprimanding” or Sweden’s mild success. Just objectively speaking, it does seem as though the burden is always on the democratic voters to not further engange in partisanship (especially after an election) whereas republicans almost solely rely on it to expand their turnout as they prepare for midterm elections. Of course, it would help if democrats actually campaigned on a coherent economic message so as to not come off as just moralizing coastal elites, but, well, that’s a separate issue. Thanks again.

If you get a trade for being a electrician or HVAC installer, you go through a lot of training and the journeymanship (think a paid internship) until you are allowed to go out on your own. Electricians usually have high IQs. Okay, anyone who graduated from wherever and you are not an engineer or architect, let's see you wire up a building...

8:55: hi from new Zealand but hey on the upside because you didn't go hard and fast with the first lock down you're economy's doing much better right because that was the argument right.. that a lock down would hurt the economy ... and yes anyone who has ever played a city building game is barely containing their laughter and rolling their eyes at this point ...

63 yr old fart here. I've always been in the minority re foreign policy & war, civil rights, income distribution, drugs, the whole gamut. The majority of my generation were conservative and buttoned down when I graduated high school in 1975, and they still are. Even moreso as they married, had kids, owned property, had careers, etc. Now we are all old farts sitting at home bitching about the younguns on Facebook all day. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Most people are conservative by nature and fear the other, and it gets worse the older they get.

I don't see how people who do not like authoritarian government in other countries could think that the party of Trump was the right choice. We have socialism for business under Republicans . I prefer socialism for people.

Mark: “So how do you square these two simultaneous truths within one party?” Answer: you create a third party.

I'm up for some baked-in circle squaring.

I expect Trump to declare Mar-A-Largo the provisional capital of the 'Reall US True Govt of America' in exile.

Mark Blythe: "Now you're running your car into the ground...just to survive!" B.I.N.G.O.!--but wait, I live in Portland...can that really be true?

I wonder how many Latinos the UFC fighter Jorge Masvidal got to vote for Trump.

Mark, Belgium hasn't had a federal government during most of the corona crisis. We have 8 ministers of health who, until very recently, didn't agree about anything. We count suspected (unconfirmed) covid deaths. You simply can't compare those numbers. The best thing you can say is that even if you actually try, this stuff is easy to mess up, policy-wise.

They say that that covid and trump are their main topics but if you watch enough of their podcast Brexit wins by a country mile.

Hey does anyone remember what happened to Ward Churchill? Do you think conservatives did that to make an example of him? You know keep academics in line.

I understand your hatred of essentialism, but the real issue is that as societies become more atomised, there is less deep understanding and less real knowledge of how the impact of capitalism is. Capitalism is failing right now, and the forces of Conservatism are opting for Business as Usual which is looking more impossible as we go on. Most people have absorbed normative beliefs which don't reflect the very real alternatives. That world view needs to be challenged somehow, but not from a position of patronising them. Rather from the position of sharing the same destination but with honest disagreement about what route to take. It's not going to be easy because Divide and Rule is a viable strategy right now. But we need to engage in honest conversations so that each perspective can be seen to have more in common than what separates them.

The greatest insult must be " Fly-Over-Country" THAT says it all !

Hey, do not always rely on the old stereotypes so much... modern germans tend to have a focus on regulating (oor overregulating), spliting and precisely defining responsibilities (enabling them to be collectively un- and irresponsible, look at the structures set up by german car companies, deutsche bank, etc.), not so much on actually achieving stuff anymore, but that's just my humble opinion. Another point I want to make, because I have seen it done so many times over the last weeks: Democrats tend to be mostly left on more or less cosmetic issues as a whole (the term "social progressive policies" sometimes being used on leftist youtube channels)(and I know, for people involved with these issues, it's nothing like cosmetic at all) while pretending to change things for the better without changing anything (a problem shared by many nations in europe as well). It's somewhat frustrating to see by how far U.S. politics have shifted straight to the right even just in the last decade, with the moderate democrats forming something akin to a center-right to right party by most european standards, and still the same tired tropes being used against anyone not closely aligned to that imaginary center, be it crying leftist social justice workers wanting to bankrupt the US to the trump-voting basket of deplorables (and mind you, that insult is flung from center-right wing democrats, rarely if ever from the left wing) I like your podcast, I like that you bring a lot of nuance into the topics you talk about, and I'm going to keep listening, but sometimes it's ... interesting to see where your focus lies. Anyway, greetings from this german millennial :P

Berlin failure and old east failure is unrepresentative of us in the north/north west. Just like american ideas of bavarian stereotypes.

neo-liberal economic policies brought all of this about, thanks milton friedman.

We are able to fund social programs because of MMT -- we are a sovereign currency. So we are NOT going to be like Venezuela

Is the stock market going to tank? Trump acting like a sore loser. Shock of shocks. Bad news it look like he's running in 24'

There are many innaccuracies in this podcast but I won't spoil peoples contentedness with the narrative these two pump out. They do not live in the real world and I suppose Blair is a bit closer because of his 'humble beginnings' but the other one is a bit of a nonsense.

Pinoche has nothing to do with Venezuela... the reason why Venezuela and Cuba suffer from poverty is because they have massive sanctions, Cuba for nearly 60 years! So, before you judge the political system, you need to evaluate the whole story. Vietnam has a socialist system (despite the US) and they are doing fine. Why? Because after the failed war, we left them alone!

Latinos do not like the socialist message. However Florida voted for a $15 minimum by a big margin. Every democrat who supported medicare for all won, even against republican incumbants. Maybe a focus on the economics.

Mark is usually chock full of information and intellectual inroads. This format is too careful simple and lowbrow for me. Get back to reading the tea leaves with thought provoking economic analysis. I’m tired of COVID talk, and the vaccine enthusiasts

stop talking about the latino vote as monolithic. Its a racist assumption. Theres no such thing as the "Latino Vote". or the Black vote for that matter